Free Fall
by Arsenic Allure
Summary: ‘Be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have is all you need.’ As autumn saps the gum leaves grey, Hermione arrives in Australia.


Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling earns her credit. This is hers, scene manipulation is mine. Quote: Sarah Ban Breathnach.

...

**Free Fall**

'_Be grateful for the home you have, knowing that at this moment, all you have is all you need.'_

**One: The Beholder**

'Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the eyes are the window to the soul,' she tells the reflection, 'and my soul, from its very depths, finds you disgusting.'

The reflection is merely silent, a scowl on its face. The eyes are stone cold, without mercy. That voice is laced with poison. Hermione drops the white flannel on the bathroom counter and stares up at her damp face. Small waterlines embed themselves in the cracks. Her dressing gown is not quite tied and she tugs it open more, turning to her side and sucking her stomach in as far as it can go. It is not far enough. She frowns and turns back. 'Who are you fooling, Granger?'

Her face in the mirror is red and blotchy. Raging hormones have blessed her with pimples and her intellect bestowed her with a critical eye. She stares harder and with each second another flaw appears. Her nose is too big, her eyes dull, lips cracked, hair unruly. Her teeth belong to a walrus. She blinks. Grotesque! Grotesque!

She blinks again and looks past her bushy head and sloping shoulders to see the door ajar and a pair of green eyes looking in. Her cowardly gaze falls. The flannel clenched in her hand drops. _He heard?_

She tugs her dressing gown closed and stares at her fists. 'No.' There is a whisper in her ear, a hand on her shoulder and an arm that wraps around her curving stomach, covering her white knuckles. She looks up as his face appears from behind the brown bush and his chin rests on her shoulder, green eyes ablaze.

Harry smiles. 'If beauty is in the eye of the beholder and eyes are windows to the soul,' he tells her, 'then my soul thinks you're lovely.' Hermione bites her lower lip and watches as colour spills towards it. 'Inside and out.'

'There's blood on my hands, Harry. I'm tired of fighting it. I don't know what to do.'

'Me neither,' says Harry sadly, not missing a beat. His eyes are far away. 'But I do something everyday – I go on, and that seems to help.' He pats her hand and turns his eyes back to hers.

'Yeah?'

'Yeah. Professor Lupin said that one day we'll wake up and our first thoughts won't be on those who we lost or killed. And until that day comes, I'm just putting one foot in front of the other.' He turns her toward him and wipes her sudden tears with the flannel. She looks to her friend and tentatively lifts her lips when he says, 'I'll hold your hand. You, Ron and me: we'll do this together.'

Hermione gazes at their joined hands for a long time. Then she says, 'I want to see my parents again, Harry, before I go back to Hogwarts. I have to find them.'

He smiles and turns to go. Stopping at the door, his voice is a question but it is obvious he already knows the answer 'You going alone?'

'Not really.' She smiles at his confusion. 'I'm glad you're always here. So glad.'

Harry taps the door and laughs. 'I am too, Hermione. We'll see you when you get back.'

'Thanks, Harry,' Hermione says, turning back to the mirror. 'See you soon.'

...

**Two: It's All Over But the Crying.**

Lights are on all over Sydney when she arrives and they are still blazing bright and hard after her first drink. Hermione, falling from a wooden barstool, wears her stiff travelling clothes that are dusty and crinkled from her journey. She picks up her glass and holds it to her eye drops dribbling from the top of the glass. The water swims in her gaze, like tears. The mosaic inside the drops reflects the cheap, stained-glass colour, pewter blue and deep-moss green, tripping her up. She is lost in the blur. She cries in that blur. The sob that echoes in her mind is not her own.

'Hey, you alright?'

Hermione glances toward a bored waiter towering over her head, knowing he is no threat, and her glass falls to the counter with a careless thud. She nods, quiet in her haze.

His eyes, set in his grimy face, peer at her, flicking up and down. 'Right.' He does not smile when he asks, 'Another of the same?'

'Uh...' Her lips purse and she blinks but the grey matter in the corners of her eyes refuses to disperse. They are built in. They are chasing after her and she feels heavy. 'Sure. Sure, why not? Gotta let go sometime, Ron always says so.' She stumbles up and slides into a stool. A man to the left is sapping a cigarette, coolly blowing its smoke into her face. He taps it on an ash tray and the ash falls, crumpling, splitting and breaking into dust motes to be snatched by the light. She feels like ash, ready to be discarded and forgotten. Her head falls and she waits to pick it up. A glass is set in front of her, the other removed. Bourbon, full of sin. If only her mother could see her now.

'Hey, Miss. Hey, you.' She stirs at the voice, not realising that her head has fallen onto her arms and her hair is draped over the counter in a brambled mess. 'You alright?'

She rubs her eyes. It is the smoker, younger than her, too young for her even though they look the same age or close. 'Maybe,' she says, and offers nothing more. She eyes his honey hair and turns away from his toothy smile.

But he is persistent. 'Hey, hey, you've got an accent. You're not from around here. Why you here?'

It bubbles. She is boiling and it bubbles to the surface before she can stop it. 'My parents are– I'm bringing them home.'

'Sweet. Say do you want me to buy you a drink? We can talk about the uselessness of the folks and, you know, stuff.' Hermione shivers and shifts further away, ignoring him completely. She has been hit with a missile and needs to lick her wounds. Because he is a kid, and because she is obviously not interested, he nods sulkily and leaves with his tail between his legs.

Hermione stays in the bar until everyone is gone and she is alone. Only the bartender remains looking at her like he knows the sins she has committed, knows what these muggle innocents could never comprehend. He is old enough to be her new father, with a strong jaw and greyed stubble across his sagging chin. His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and they know.

As if she were Catholic, like she could believe in anything that would forsake her and her world, she decides he is the pastor and she the believer. She does not have to pretend to weld grievous sins.

'Bartenders hear many stories in their jobs, right? I guess you've heard it all.' She nods to him, nodding so far she almost falls from her chair. A slow blink; a frown appears. His glasses start to fall down his nose.

'Suppose so.'

'Here, I'll tell you one. I hurt my parents. They don't know it yet, but I did. I'm a bad daughter. Right now... now, I don't exist for them. They haven't a clue. But I had to. You know I had to, right? I did the right thing. I chose right over easy - they said it would be easy! It wasn't _easy_ at all. But I chose. I did the right thing.'

He cannot possibly understand. His cryptic, evasive answer shows it. 'I'm sure you did.'

'You don't believe me, I know, and neither will they when I have to tell them. I don't know what to do. My mother is going to be so angry. I wasn't all I could be. 'Cause I'm not a good daughter, you see. And I'm paying for it, I assure you. Maybe I hurt, or killed, or– No!'

He starts, jumping back. 'But–'

'Please!' Hermione pushes herself up on her jelly arms, staring wide eyed at the frozen bartender with his ears open and her secret gone. 'Don't call the police. Don't, please, I just—'

'Hold up!' His hand is raised and she cowers like a reprimanded puppy. Where did the war heroine go? Slowly, surely, he leans forward, glancing around him. 'Wars are ugly things, Miss Granger,' he whispers conspiratorially. Her blood runs cold with the unexpected frost in his new tone. 'You'll pay for your share your whole life, just like I did. All soldiers pay their penance.'

Hermione attempts to focus on the bartender who has trapped her. His mouth is a tight, thin line and she feels abruptly garrotted. 'Are you–?'

'I am.'

It dawns on her that the wizard hiding in a hotel bar and is a reflection of her in an unsuccessful future. Tears suddenly sprout to her eyes and she wipes them away hurriedly, trying to hide in the curtain of her trademark hair. Her voice is cracked. 'What happens next?'

'The aftermath. Keep your friends close.' The bartender takes her glass. 'Learn to cope.'

'How did you?'

He does not answer and she does not press him. Somewhere down the hall, a clunk is heard and Hermione feels like it is another dead body falling to the ground and her wand burns in her pocket. She shivers, her shoulders shaking. 'Thank you,' she whispers, turning away. 'I have to go retrieve my parents now.'

'They all right?'

'I hope so.' She swivels back to him, her head asleep and her stomach queasy. 'How do I know if I'm a good person or not? How do I justify it?'

'You can't.'

'I must.'

The bartender ages one year per second until his skin is like parchment and yellowy-grey with the memory that is haunting his eyes. 'Decide on your humanity,' he advises slowly, as if each word slices his throat. 'Are you a bad person?' Hermione is afraid that she can only tap her short nails, quick and disorganised, against the stable wood and answer with:

'Well... I've done bad things.'

He shakes his head, shaggy hair falling like tangible shadows to barricade his grim expression, and slowly places the glass on the counter. The question he asks is echoed in the click of the door as she flees the bar for the Sydney streets.

Later she thinks she overreacted to her ignorance, later she thinks she knows how to cope and later still she realises that there is no way to justify anything but with the oldest cliché in the book: All is fair in love and war.

But still she is hiding in her moth-eaten hotel room with her books clutched tight to her chest. The question repeats in her head, echoing its urgency, and she cannot find the answer no matter how hard she tries. Her mother whispers, her father whispers, her friends whisper, the dead whispers:

'Is Hermione Granger a bad person?'

And it scares her to death.

...

**Three: Where the Wild Things Are**

Hermione dreams:

_She can feel the stone of the statue scaling her hands, fingers tightly wrapped around it. She raises it high and their frightened, confused faces twist into horror. _

'_I love you.'_

_So smooth, so deadly. A blunt instrument and a swish of a wand._

'_They were lying next to a bench in the park. It looked like an accident. I found this next to them. Please help them.'_

_A note. A name. Identification. Her own notoriously neat handwriting stained with tears and creases. 'Thank you for bringing them in.'_

'_I really must go. I hope they will be all right.'_

'_They're stable, don't worry. You won't stay?'_

'_I can't. Keep them safe. Please. I'll come visit them if I have the chance.'_

_She stands outside the London hospital with her face to the sky before striding to the Western car park. Ron waits for her and stays silent when she stops, takes back her book bag and grasps his hand._

'_Go.'_

_-x-x-x-_

A cricket chirping on the glass, a memory resurfaces. The taxi driver taps his window to shoo her away. Groggily, she steps out, handing in him the foreign, Australian money.

Home ground: the library. A phone book: their fake name. Wilkins burning her eyes, a W and an M for her safe, protected parents as acid against her pupils.

Her stomach is in knots. Her hands shake and the fine creases of the paper slice her skin. The blood reminds her, the aching red of life lost for the cost of liberation. _Did we really do so well?_ But still, Harry's green eyes, the fire of Ron's hair, Ginny's hand in hers at the endless track of funerals.

_You are not alone, you are not alone._

The line rings. She stares at the passing commuters: a student struggling with papers in the wind, a mother with her children bound to her by leashes, a man feeding ducks and a duck diving underwater with its legs helpless and kicking in the sharp air. Liquid gaze from the truth: a daughter, a son, a friend.

_Did I kill them too?_

Hermione squeezes her eyes shut. The line rings.

'Hello?'

_Oh, god._

'Hello? Is anyone there?'

'Mum...'

'I'm sorry? I couldn't quite hear you. Are you sure you have the right number?'

_Mum, it hurts._

'...You're not looking for the Corner Bookstore in Randwick are you?'

'A bookstore?'

'That's right. We're the co-owners. Must have got the numbers mixed up on the catalogue, is that it?'

_Maybe..._

'I'm...'

'Hold on. Wendell! Are you sure the volume is high enough on the phone?'

'Dad. Mum. Dad.'

There was silence on the end. She waited for her name. _Hermione, Hermione, oh it really is you!_

But-

'I believe you have the wrong number, okay, sweetie? I'll give you the number and address for the Bookstore.'

A whisper: 'Okay.' The words pass by in her head, seared down.

'All right, see you then.'

'Okay.'

'... Have a good day.'

_Click._

The booth turns cold after a century. A touch to her shoulder sends her reaching for her wand, spinning around, holding the gleaming, cracked wood to a neck to execute in chilling warfare. It stares, eyes wide with surprise, and the wand catches on its Adam's apple as it swallows. Her cheeks hurt from the tears that crusted her eyes shut. As she retreats, the abandoned phone smacks the pane of glass in mockery. The stranger in the grey woollen suit slides in and shuts the door quickly. She hears it still, the classic cliché of a broken record.

'... Have a good day.'

_Click_.

_-x-x-x-_

A bookstore. The Corner Bookstore in Randwick. It is quaint and small and English. Is this her mother and father? Not a dentistry clinic, but a bookstore.

Hermione stares at it for a long time before she goes in. Its windows are shadowed by neat displays of textbooks and fiction, and the shop door is closed, but she can hear the shop bell tinkling as customers bustle in and out, as populated as Weasley's Wizard Wheezes on a Hogsmeade weekend. Each time the door opens, Hermione cranes her neck to glimpse the desk and each time it is hidden from her sight.

The bell is the first warning, the latch on the door the next:

_Click!_

'... Have a good day.'

_Click_.

Hermione shivers. That voice, that voice, that voice in her head that she never thought would exist aloud again. She focuses on a poster of a smiling, tanned blonde reading a thick paperback on a sparkling, sandy beach: paradise, a warning. Third time's the charm. Hermione turns and tries to escape and evade like a good warrior should, but an unexpected obstacle rears up and hunts her down until she is speechless and cowering before it.

Her mother. She hasn't aged a day. Her skin is clear of the lines that worry had wrought upon its folds, and her eyes are bright with enthusiasm. She carries a pile of textbooks in her arm. Australia suits her. Forgetfulness becomes her.

Monica Wilkins stands before her. Hermione sees her mother, Jane Granger, cured of all the ills her offspring forced upon her. But Monica Wilkins is who smiles kindly to the daughter she does not remember, seeing only a girl who is fighting not to cry, and Hermione realises that she cannot do it. She cannot until her own life is like theirs, where the worry lines that came ten years too early would disappear and the magical world, which she will always be a part of, is healed. That world is scarred from war and so is she.

She brushes her father on the way out, smells his smell, hears his voice, and she is sure he feels her sob.

_-x-x-x-_

Too many come to pick her up from the airport. Harry, Ron and Ginny are crowded in the back with George driving stoic and an empty seat next to him. The car pulls up and they slap on smiling faces that try to mask the question which dies on their lips at the sight of her. It went badly and they know the whole truth, nothing but the truth, when Hermione gets in and the only word she says is:

'Drive.'

...

**Four: How Do We Reconcile This?**

A hand touches his shoulder.

'You don't have to come.'

'I know, Hermione.' George tells her. He looks at the plane tickets Harry had bought them.

'Why, then?'

'Because I want to.'

_-x-x-x-_

George sits on a golden beach and watches sapphire waves crash on slick, bronze rocks. A topaz sky holds diamond clouds that juxtapose with the obsidian shadows of the late afternoon. In the sky hangs a ruby sun. George can barely look at it.

His legs are drawn up around him in the glass world, tight and held fast by padlocked arms, as if he believes that he may cut himself if he moves. George does not want to die on his birthday.

Whilst he stares at dull light sinking below the horizon, a girl is standing behind him. His baby sister; close, cold, with a black scarf that flies with the sudden wind. Ginny's arms are crossed, her lips pulled back in defence, but still she says, 'It's all right, George. We miss him too. It's been three years and we still miss him.'

_-x-x-x-_

'Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday Fred and George! Happy birthday to you!'

Still he hears it, whispered in every tree, entwined in the half-silence of the world. Their birthday. Today is _their_ birthday. When will a smile be enough?

_-x-x-x-_

George dreams:

_Fred is in the shadows. Fred is in his bed, snoring across the room. George leaps from his own to snatch back the covers and there is–_

_Empty air._

_-x-x-x-_

_They had their brooms and they were at the orchard, having snuck away from the iron grip of their terrified parents. They had not flown, though, because Fred usually took off first and that night he had stood still._

'_Fred?'_

'_Yeah?'_

'_You're scared, aren't you?'_

'_Shitless.'_

_And he was too: he looked it, hunched where usually he is tall. His eyes were so wide! Had he been shaking? Had he been shaking like a leaf?_

_George stepped closer and put an arm around his twin's shoulder. They both turned their heads up high to midnight's bright, full moon. George was sure the Moon's Man was laughing at them._

'_It's all right, Fred. We'll be fine.' He sounded so calm. 'You bloody girl.'_

'_I don't know.' Fred had gritted his teeth and George heard their crunch. Like a saw or a bug underneath his shoe, its exoskeleton's inaudible crushing. 'Something's off, right? You feel it too?'_

_George did feel it, an ache in his heart, always heavy. A bad omen for sure. _

_Fred stared at him, probably having caught the flicking of his eyes: guilt, fear, lies to come. 'You do, don't you?' A question. A statement. The truth._

_But he, stupidly, idiotically, said to his brother, 'No. What are you talking about? You going barmy, Fred?'_

_Fred was not fun and games that night. He shrugged his brother off. 'Sometimes I think I am,' he said, and vanished away._

_Why hadn't he called him back?_

_-x-x-x-_

'_Happy Birthday to you. Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday our dear George, Happy birthday to you.'_

_They tried to make up the syllables and George was almost glad underneath his sudden anger. He could hear them outside his room, begging him to come out, unharmed. No, he hadn't killed himself yet, but they needed to be sure. That room wouldn't save him and a song without the right words couldn't either. He rose from his bed, the tears burned off of their own accord, and banged on the wood. This was his chorus, this was his rebuttal. Leave me alone, it said, leave me and my brother alone! You can't make up for it! You can't! He's! He's! He's dead, all right? He's dead, he's dead. He died, died and left me alone – he left me alone! – so you do it too! This is not my birthday, it is not mine. It is ours! It was ours. It has been ours. It will always be ours. It..._

_There were no April fools that year._

_-x-x-x-_

They are at the sea again and George has disappeared again. Australia is a stupidly dry country. There has been no rain for days. What will mock his sorrow now? Drab trees? Sparse, spiky shrubbery? Dead dust? Stoneless sand? How can everything be so different while he stays the same?

Ginny leaves him be and he is subjected to fitful sleep with the sun so when he wakes up with sand in his raggedy hair and clustered around his cursed ear he expects to see only darkness. Not a girl with a light locked inside a canister, not a woman who is missing something almost like himself. He stays as quiet as he can, the training he and Fred did for warfare burning through his veins. The wind is still blowing and brushes Hermione's fringe around her face, and that face is pulled into a frown that is different from her usual look; harsher, sadder. A sad little smile flashes and he knows he has been caught. He shouldn't have held his breath. Who holds their breath while their sleeping?

The smile slides from her face and the frown returns, as if it is safe to show him that hidden meaning now that they are sharing this private moment. She cups some sand in her palm, lets it fall through her fingers, and her voice is the tone of that falling sand. 'Where do you go when you're gone?'

He shakes his head to clear the sand from it and passes a hand over his damaged ear, shivering like he always does as he thinks about the excruciating pain and the blinding darkness that would eternally remain with that spot. 'Away,' he finally says, short, sour sweet.

'Everyone goes away,' she counters, not missing a beat. 'Away is an umbrella term: it means nothing right now.'

'What do you want me to say?' George snaps. He grips the sand and sits up, feeling the blood rush to his cheeks when she sighs. The only sound is the sighing of the sea, the waves talking to one another, battling, whispering. He sits back down again, slipping on the dunes as they catch on his hands. 'The truth, I suppose.'

'It couldn't hurt.'

H slams the sand. 'I go _here_.'

'In your _head_, George.'

'Well I'm not going to tell you if you're yelling at me, Hermione! Merlin, you're so bossy. Fred and I..._ I_ should teach you a lesson.' Somehow he has stood again and somehow her voice speaks nothing but her hand is far from silent.

It grasps his from far below and he lets her because she needs it and maybe he does too. No one touches him voluntarily anymore. Her hands are warm and slightly calloused around her nails from holding a quill for years. She tugs once and he sits down next to her, their bodies touching so he can protect her from the cold of the autumn wind somewhat. The light shines its beam on the breaking waves in front of them, a beacon of hope.

'You don't have to tell me, George. I'm sorry I'm bossy.'

George swallows. 'I'm sorry I called you bossy.'

'I'm sorry I asked.'

The waves crash. The light shines. George speaks: 'I visit him.'

'All right.' She picks up a twig and traces lines in the sand, swirls and straight squares with boxy edges. He can hardly see in the blue shadows cloaked over the world, nothing but what that yellow light reveals.

The waves crash. The light shines. Hermione speaks: 'I visit them too. When I'm not here, I'm with them.'

They are both saying the same thing: _I miss you_.

George stands and offers Hermione his hand to pull her up. They brush off and head up the slope. He is glad she has not bothered to force a happy birthday.

George points to the light bobbing in front of them.

'What's that thing? I could sell it in the shop.'

Hermione hands it to him, clicking it on and off to show him how it works. The button is the key, he sees, and in that moment of darkness her face goes from happy to sad to happy. Secrets are everywhere, especially in the night. He takes her hand as a tether, safe from the dark while he flicks it on and off. Five minutes pass of trudging nowhere and George mutters, 'You still haven't told me what it is.'

Hermione laughs. 'It's a torch, George. It lights the way.'

...

**Five: Forgive Me, Father, for I Have Sinned.**

'You're better now. The nightmares have stopped, Harry is stable, Ron stopped drinking and most of us can stand on our own. The magical world is as it was. You've got a good job in the Ministry. You're a war heroine. You can do it. This is tiny. You can get them back.'

Her reflection stays silent and her oak eyes are blank. The fear she feels does not show through. 'That's bad,' she answers herself, her confusion's frown creaseless upon her brow. 'Am I a good person?'

'The best,' a voice says: George revealed in the mirror.

_-x-x-x-_

They stand outside the Corner Bookstore, watching Saturday Sydneysiders march to and fro. Monica and Wendell Wilkins are both in today.

'You can do it, Hermione,' Ginny tells her. Hermione smiles and her hands cease their uncontrollable tremors. Ron and Harry nod vigorously, their smiles suspiciously large.

George comes back from his scouting trip at a jog, breathing hard. 'Target on the move,' he says, looking to Hermione. 'Proceed?'

Hermione nods to him. 'Proceed. Advance with minimal intervention, maximum stealth.'

George nods. Harry gestures toward the wall to the West and the group crowd around George while he casts the Disillusion Charm. He holds Hermione's hand as he disappears, his other on his sister's shoulder.

'When I get confirmation, I'll back off. That's your cue, all right? We've got one shot.'

'I know.' Hermione says, biting her lip.

'He's right, Hermione,' Harry looks toward her thoughtfully. 'You go around telling them about how you charmed their memory away, you're their long-lost daughter and we're all magical wizards, and they don't believe you, it's through. And even—'

'I know! I know I can't give them a choice, so you don't have to lecture me, okay, Harry? I know that the Obliviators will come and make it worse and they won't remember being happy at all. I understand.' Harry's face darkens dangerously for a moment, as if he is still their Commander in the war. He nods in a tight salute and steps away to watch the crowds. Hermione brushes her hand over her face, cupping her lips. Her eyes are fixated on the ground.

George hugs her once and pushes his way out so all she is left with is the anxiety he could not quell and the scent of his own in the sweat from his skin. They watch him manoeuvre quietly through the crowd, pushing chairs in inch-by-inch, darting away from people. Ginny turns to Harry. 'Now?'

'Window shopping, Gin.' Harry turns to Hermione. 'I'm sorry. Just... sorry. Good luck.' He hugs her to him and Hermione holds onto him tightly before she will let him go. She tries to hide the burning tears pooling in her eyes, nodding to the ground in a whisper of _I'm okay, I'm fine. Go. Go be happy. _Ginny and Harry move off.

'You all right, Hermione?' Ron asks, wrapping his arm around her shoulders. She pats his hand, holds it in hers and moves forward to brave the crowd. Ron follows closely after.

He opens the door for her when they reach the store and she makes sure her head is held high when she enters. Monica Wilkins smiles at her with the stranger's smile and turns back to her work.

Ron leaves her to seek her father while Hermione peers from between the shelves at her mother. Monica is happy. Her skin glows, her smile is radiant and her pose is languid and relaxed with graceful poise. She has the fingers of someone who has turned many pages of books rather than fumbled with tears over her only endangered child's detailed letters.

'I'll see what I can do.' Her father's voice sails into her ears and Hermione turns toward him to see him and Ron less than two metres away. Her father looks up, smiles with a question in his eyes, and continues toward the counter.

'Not much,' Ron was saying. 'Just about chess: tips and tricks, advanced, though.'

'Not a beginner?'

'I've got some experience.'

Wendell laughs shortly and turns to his wife. 'Monica, look something up, please. _Advanced Chess Tactics_, no idea about the author or publisher. Might be just what this young lad needs.'

Their voices seem to fade to white noise. Hermione realises she almost forgot what it was like to see her simple parents smile all the time. She used to wonder if their faces cracked at night and they glued them back together each morning so they wouldn't scare her. Then Hermione feels a tug on her hand and sees a book shift on the shelf. George's voice in her ear: 'All clear. Good luck.' Warm lips, warm breath: in any other situation, it might have been called flirting.

Hermione steps out from behind the shelves. 'Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins? My name is Hermione Granger.' She holds up her wand and Ron steps back. 'And I'm a witch.'

She seals their fate.

Blue shots of light like electricity jolt into their heads and they momentarily crumble: Ron catches her father. Hermione crouches by her mother's chair. They wait for them to wake up, afraid of what they will say, afraid of what they won't.

Her mother's brown eyes alight on her and she frowns. 'Hermione?'

'Oh, Mum...' She hugs her tightly, the tears finally spilling from her eyes.

'Darling, what happened?'

Ron helps her father lean against the desk and puts his hand on Hermione's shoulder. 'Mr. and Mrs. Granger, do you know what year it is?' he asks.

'Year?' Wendell mutters. His head is in his hands.

'Yes, Dad, yes. What year is it?'

'2001?'

Hermione smiles. 'Do you remember the last two years?'

Jane Granger holds the side of her head, blinking, and peers up with her daughter's eyes. 'You stayed in the... the other world and... we moved here, to Australia. We were the Wilkins.' Hermione nods. 'Why would you do that?'

'The war, I had to protect you.' Still smiling, feeling as if her face would crack with happiness, Hermione presses her pre-prepared note into her mother's smooth palm. 'This is our hotel number. Call me. Oh Mum, I'm so—'

'You stole our lives. Both of them.'

'Jane—'

'No, John!' Jane shakes off his hand. 'We talked about this. We talked about what we would do if she ever used her magic on us. We would take it into consideration.'

Ron shakes his head and pulls Hermione away from her advancing mother. 'Mrs. Granger, you don't understand how dangerous it was for you.'

'If you knew who you were, who I was, then the Voldemort and his Death Eaters would go after you, torture you, kill you.' Hermione looks at her father, holds his bicep until he slowly shifts away. Frowning, she turns to her mother. 'I... I couldn't let that happen. I had to. I saved you—'

Jane shoots from her chair. 'You stole us!'

'She protected you!' Ron shouts, pushing Hermione behind him. Hermione feels George's hand close around her fingers. 'We lost a lot of people in that war. We lost a lot of lives, good lives. I lost my brother! Your daughter's done the right thing by you. She used her magic on you because it was the safest thing_. _It was all for you, only you!'

'How can we trust her now?' Monica hisses, advancing. 'How can we?'

'She's your daughter.' Ron spits. 'Family's right. Isn't that enough?'

'No.'

To her father: 'Dad?'

He breathes a deep, guttering sigh and holds his hand across his face like a visor, like he can barely look at her for the shame. 'Honey, I don't know. I'm sorry, I don't.'

Hermione drops her wand, her hand planted across her mouth, and it rolls across the floor to rest at Jane Granger's feet. Jane stares at it, a look of red hot hatred in the cruel distaste displayed by her lips. 'You used this wand on us, like a gun. You stole three years of our life.'

Hermione grasps her mother's hand and sobs. 'To make you happy! You were so happy.'

'Yes, we were. You broke us, and now we break you.'

In a swift movement, she grinds her heel into the wood, kicks it, twists and splinters it. It breaks and Hermione cries out, scrambling forward. But she trips and spins and she hits her head on the corner of the desk. She gasps and crumples to the ground in a broken heap. Her broken wand, her power, is clutched in her hand. Distantly Ron is calling her name and the sound of a crash echoes in her ears. Crawling across the ground, Hermione grasps her mother's ankle, looks up to her parents' shocked faces, and hoarsely gasps, 'I forgive you.'

Her head lolls as George hauls her into his arms, shoving Ron out the door. They brave the parting crowd and, finally, she fades.

_-x-x-x-_

Voices from far away:

'Really going to... I'll give 'em a piece of my mind. Breaking her wand, getting her hurt. All their fault.'

'They didn't know.'

'Doesn't make it right!'

'Ron, calm down! You're going to wake her.'

'At least we'll know she's alive!'

Hermione's breath: _I'm here_.

'The doctors said bed rest. She's fine.'

'Fine. I'm going for a drink.'

'Ron...'

'Fine, outside! Jesus Christ.'

'Fuck...'

'Harry?'

'God, Ginny, I swear...'

'I know.'

'Anyway, Ollivander's coming right here. Just has to get permission for a Portkey.'

'Thanks, Harry. Did he say he could fix it?'

'Said he'd have to look at it. Where's George?'

'Away. He's scared... you know. I mean... you know.'

'It'll be all right, Gin.'

_-x-x-x-_

The phone rings. Harry answers.

'Hello?'

A sigh on the other end.

Hang up.

_-x-x-x-_

Her eyes are crusted shut but the light shining blood red against her closed lids is too much. She shifts, rolling away to bury her face in the warm pillow.

Ollivander's goblin-like face frowns at her from above. 'Awake, I see. Good. Let's keep it that way from now on. Not a good idea for someone like you to be without your working wand.' He stands and closes his case at its clasps with two clacks, placing her repaired wand on the side table. 'I'll let them in now.'

Hermione blinks again: the room is crowded with three smiling faces bearing down on her. 'Welcome back,' Ginny says, hugging her. Hermione smiles, still confused.

'Hotel?'

'That's right,' Harry says, smiling broadly. 'Not too banged up, are you?'

Ron frowns down at her, clearly exasperated. 'How can they understand that telly-thing if they can't understand that our wands are connected to our health? Bloody muggles.'

They explain to her that her parents rushed out of the shop after her and almost got caught in their mass Apparition. They were told to call the hotel number before sundown in three days otherwise the group would be gone, back to London.

'How long have I been sleeping?'

'Two days. They have to call tonight.'

'They haven't called?'

Harry shook his head. 'Sorry, no.'

She turns away and says she wants to sleep again. Her sleep is in the form of staring at the wall of the room behind the twin bed, staring until pin-pricks form in her eyes and she blinks.

_-x-x-x-_

The phone rings.

'Mr. and Mrs. Granger?'

Hang up.

_-x-x-x-_

The room is lit by an orange glow when she rises again to silence. On the other side of the room is the telephone and another bed with a body underneath the sheets. Hermione peers at it, knows who it is, gets up and goes to him.

'Hey.'

'I'm sorry I got scared,' George says. He takes her hand. 'I've been on shift to mind the phone. Thought I could... you know, two birds with one stone.'

'Anything?'

He slowly shakes his head and she looks away. George sits up against the headboard and helps her sit with him. 'Where are the others?'

'Harry's showing them the telly and its strange Australian programs again. They still haven't completely gotten over the accent.'

Hermione shifts and ends up curled into his chest, her ear on his heart. She cannot bear to look at the sinking sun. 'Why won't they call?'

'Scared. We've talked about this.'

'Tell me again.'

She listens to his steady heart while he talks about why. Her attention is ripped:

The phone is ringing.

'I'm scared.'

'Answer it.'

She lifts it off the cradle in shaking hands.

'Mum? Dad?'

A breath, a heavy sigh.

'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please say something.'

A pause.

'We're coming, honey. We're coming.'

**Fin.**

_Comments are appreciated. Thank you for reading._

-AA-


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